PCT?! It’s getting real. - PCT 2024
Looks like I’m going on a little walk next year! I never, in my wildest dreams, thought this could actually be a reality. But here we are!
I read about the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in an adventure magazine years upon years ago. I remember thinking to myself how cool it would be to do something so grand! To live outdoors for half a year and just walk. I was and am, an adventurous soul but at that time, I had only been camping once on a Girl Guide trip in the 5th grade and I doubt that experience would hold any weight on a real backpacking adventure. My family was the furthest from outdoorsy. We never hiked let alone backpacked so a trip of this magnitude was far beyond reach despite having jumped on a Greyhound bus alone, at age 16, across the country to hang out on Vancouver Island for a summer. I admired the hikers that were bold enough to attempt such an endeavour but put the idea out of mind for twenty some odd years.
Fast forward to November 2022. I was sick. So sick. Long Covid that impacted my lungs. It was months of agony. I couldn’t breathe. My bestie rushed me to the emergency department when I awoke with fluid in my lungs. Up until this point I had been leading a major project for work and had been pulling consistent 12+ hour days, often 6 days a week despite being sick for months. I didn’t stop. I was dedicated to work, and to be honest, I am a bit of a workaholic; guess I get that from my Dad. But my body shut down. I ended up hospitalized, struggling to breathe. I honestly didn’t believe I’d make it out alive. I was in rough shape. As the days went by, I started feeling slightly better, it took months afterward to feel like my old self again, but I was breathing and functioning. I was scrolling through Instagram and randomly stumbled upon a hikers PCT account from summer of 2022. I watched every video. I viewed every post. And I daydreamed as I laid in my hospital bed, what it would be like to hike the PCT. To just be out there… one with the land. By this point, I had hiked a bit. I had camped a lot but I was in no way what I’d consider to be ‘thru-hiker material’. But here I was, engrossed in the beauty of the PCT and following the experience of this hiker on her journey from the border of Mexico and California all the way to Canada. 2650 miles. I was inspired.
I made it out of the hospital but I wasn’t exactly out of the woods as I was diagnosed with Covid-induced asthma. Months of recovery proceeded. Doctors, breathing tests, inhalers, the inability to walk up stairs or hills without feeling winded… all this while I worked on the side of a mountain. I don’t even know how I did it. But I did! And the PCT was alive in my mind.
One random night, while I was still recovering, but feeling much better, I mentioned to my bestie (who is also my roommate for context) that I wanted to hike the PCT. I’m quite sure he thought I was kidding at first. And then I’m quite sure he thought I was insane, he likely still does truth be told, but he said I should go for it. That’s what I needed to hear. Maybe, just maybe, I could do this…
PCT planning truly began.
